You are here

Ozaukee Press Editorials

Bracing weather and football notwithstanding, fall is probably not the favorite season for officials of Ozaukee County’s cities, villages and towns.

Fall is budget season, a time of the year made difficult for local office-holders by state tax-levy limits that restrict spending for community needs. The members of Port Washington’s Common Council and Grafton’s Village Board, however, can look forward to one easy spending decision: Approving the hiring of full-time firefighter-paramedics.

This week’s quiz: What controversial issue is guaranteed to frustrate the elected representatives of every city and village in Wisconsin at one time or another?

That’s easy. The answer is sidewalks.

It’s sidewalks because municipalities are saddled with protocols in dealing with these essential features of communities that are so archaic, confusing, illogical and inequitable that they are certain to enrage property owners.

Contentious issues abound in the race for Wisconsin governor, most of them exaggerated for maximum weaponized effect by each candidate, but one that may prove to be influential in the election is so clear and obvious it needs no exaggeration. In fact, the issue was presented by Gov. Scott Walker, gift wrapped and ready to be used with no assembly required, to his opponent, Tony Evers.

Last week’s deluge gave the Port Washington area a small taste, like an unsavory appetizer, of the misery natural disasters have been inflicting on other parts of the country.

The flooding produced by the nine inches of rain that fell in the span of just a few nighttime hours didn’t compare with what hurricanes, tornados and wildfires have wrought elsewhere, but it was nonetheless a powerful statement attesting to the vulnerability of humans, even in an advanced society, to the forces of nature.

Port Washington’s lakeside Veterans Park was a mecca for blues music fans last weekend when the Paramount Music Festival presented a lineup of some of the country’s most revered blues artists. Among them was the famed Reverend Raven of the Chain Smoking Altar Boys, who posed for a photo with Ann Schmidt of the Town of Saukville (right). Ann reported that she met American fans of the Reverend who came as far away as Boston and a couple who traveled from Australia to see him perform in Port.

A transportation initiative that was brilliant in its efficiency and kindness to the environment failed a few decades after it was conceived more than a century ago, yet it continues to contribute to the good life in Ozaukee County.
In the first half of the 20th century, the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Co. operated trains powered by electricity on the interurban railway from Milwaukee to the communities of Ozaukee County and points north.

That in effect was Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel’s response last week when he was asked whether his Department of Justice was doing anything to address the threat posed by plastic guns that are invisible to metal detectors.

Schimel is not one of the 21 state attorneys general who urged the U.S. secretary of state and attorney to cancel an agreement that allows the internet posting of instructions and plans for making plastic guns with 3D printers.

Remember when real estate developers were the bravest of bold capitalists?
It’s not hard to remember, because it wasn’t that long ago that even in the small towns of Ozaukee County developers were fearless entrepreneurs.
Visionaries and risk takers, they found land with potential for profit, created plans for subdivisions, apartment buildings, condos and shopping centers, persuaded lenders to finance their visions and rolled the dice.